1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method of operating an apparatus intended to permit access to services provided on subscription by a first provider, which method enables access to services offered by a second provider.
The invention also relates to an apparatus provided with means intended to permit access to services provided on subscription by a first provider, which apparatus enables access to services offered by a second provider.
2. Description of the Related Art
To develop the market for receivers/decoders enabling access to pay-TV programs, the providers of these programs want the price of these apparatuses to be as low as possible for the user. To obtain an artificially low price, certain providers either offer a subsidy on the purchase of these apparatuses, or buy them themselves so as to offer them for hire. In either case, they want their investments to produce profits by preventing an apparatus subsidized by a first provider from receiving programs supplied by a second provider, and to this end, certain receiver/decoders are provided with means for verifying whether the provider of a program which a subscriber wants to receive is the provider who has let or owns the apparatus. On the other hand, manufacturers of apparatuses prefer selling multipurpose apparatuses and users do not want to be obliged to be furnished with several apparatuses of the same type, which is expensive and cumbersome: an apparatus based on the use of several smart cards for television programs offered by several providers is known from the document EP 0 562 295 in which several card readers are connected and controlled by a single processor.
The same kind of problem is likely to occur in mobile telephony ("GSM").